. >>> but he has competition in the form of sylvia berlusconi. he tells cnbc he feels a responsibility to run. >> feel the need to return to the political arena to prevent the country from being delivered into the hands of a leftist party. >> and the crowds are out, the stores are ringing up those sales, but u.s. shoppers may be running low on holiday spirit. and analysts say that they're spending less, as well. hi, everybody. welcome. merry christmas out there. thank you for joining us here on the show. what we're looking at today, we've got slightly quiet markets ahead of the u.s. open. what we're seeing, though, that all the markets are being called lower across the board stateside. the dow is being called a bit lower, nasdaq is being called a bit lower and the s&p 500 being called down by a bybit, as well. we saw markets coming off on friday stateside. pretty significant drops, as well, given that we now seem to be a clashing of heads between the republicans and the democrats in regards to moving forward on the fiscal cliff issue. it does see